The end of AIDS? Are We There After 30 Years?

Thirty years on, it looks as though the plague can now be beaten, if the world has the will to do so...

via The Economist

Excerpt:

If AIDS is defeated, it will be thanks to an alliance of science, activism and altruism. The science has come from the world’s pharmaceutical companies, which leapt on the problem. In 1996 a batch of similar drugs, all of them inhibiting the activity of one of the AIDS virus’s crucial enzymes, appeared almost simultaneously. The effect was miraculous, if you (or your government) could afford the $15,000 a year that those drugs cost when they first came on the market.

Much of the activism came from rich-world gays. Having badgered drug companies into creating the new medicines, the activists bullied them into dropping the price. That would have happened anyway, but activism made it happen faster.

The altruism was aroused as it became clear by the mid-1990s that AIDS was not just a rich-world disease. Three-quarters of those affected were—and still are—in Africa. Unlike most infections, which strike children and the elderly, AIDS hits the most productive members of society: businessmen, civil servants, engineers, teachers, doctors, nurses. Thanks to an enormous effort by Western philanthropists and some politicians (this is one area where even the left should give credit to George Bush junior), a series of programmes has brought drugs to those infected.

The result is patchy. Not enough people—some 6.6m of the 16m who would most quickly benefit—are getting the drugs. And the pills are not a cure. Stop taking them, and the virus bounces back. But it is a huge step forward from ten years ago.

What can science offer now? A few people’s immune systems control the disease naturally (which suggests a vaccine might be possible) and antibodies have been discovered that neutralise the virus (and might thus form the basis of AIDS-clearing drugs). But a cure still seems a long way off. Prevention is, for the moment, the better bet.

There are various ways to stop people getting the disease in the first place. Nagging them to use condoms and to sleep around less does have some effect. Circumcision helps to protect men. A vaginal microbicide (none exists, but at least one trial has gone well) could protect women. The new hope centres on the idea of combining treatment with prevention.

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